DIY

A friendly disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to products I used in constructing this garment. When you click through to Amazon, I may receive — at zero cost to you — a small commission from the purchases you make. These purchases help support this site and allow me to continue writing articles. (It also means more goodie bags for my canine pals. 🐶🐶)

Cutting the Fabric

My first overwhelming sense of confusion with this pattern arose when I was working through the cutting layouts. The accompanying video completely skipped over the actual fabric cutting and marking, so I turned to the instructions.

It wasn’t clear whether the shirt fabric should be folded right-sides together or wrong-sides together. I started ironing it wrong-sides together (so that the pattern side was facing me), but started thinking, “It seems weird that all the chalk markings would be on the right-side of the fabric…”

I turned to Google and found this helpful forum discussion asking the same thing. The consensus is that it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re consistent; however people opt for right-sides together so you don’t end up with markings on the proper side on the off-chance that they don’t wash out. ✊

Ok, refold and let’s go!

A several-hour marathon cutting session ensued. Sewing was more of an athletic endeavor than I had ever expected. I cursed my squat and not-quite-wide-enough craft table and my makeshift coffee cup pattern weights as I hunched over, squinting and poking pinholes through my pattern pieces and fabric to make incomprehensible-to-me markings.

I ended up only cutting out the fabric for the shirt body and sleeves because I couldn’t stand the prospect of following still more cutting layouts for the interfacing, collar, and cuff. 😩

A Quick Note on the Accompanying Video Tutorial

While I love video tutorials, this one left a lot to be desired. Norris, the instructor in the Simplicity video, is great at explaining the steps. However, the lighting quality and fabric choice were less than stellar.

Norris is sewing a red gingham shirt, and the lighting in the video is so bright that it’s difficult to see which side is the pattern-side. As a result, I had to consult the packet instructions a great deal during the garment construction.

Wrong-side? Right-side? Can’t tell!

Normally, that would be fine. But as a complete newbie to following pattern instructions, I was often left with more questions than answers — especially when steps in the video didn’t match up with steps outlined in the pattern.

For example, Norris didn’t do the stay-stitching or basting steps outlined in the pattern.

As a result, I had to sit and make some hard decisions about which instructions to follow. In the end, I chose to do the stay-stitching but ignored a lot of the basting instructions (since I wasn’t sure at what point I should remove them, or how).

Sewing the Front, Pocket, and Back Yoke

After making a small portion of the muslin, I think I was feeling a tad overconfident. I made a few mistakes and had to pull out of the seam ripper.

One mistake was that I attached the pocket without stitching the pocket facing (step 4). What resulted was an amorphous blog of a pocket with no real definition at the top.

My boyfriend kept trying convince me to not use the seam ripper, certain that I would decimate the shirt in the process. But I secreted myself away with it and from the ashes emerged a beautiful, crisp pocket.

After fixing the pocket situation, I felt adventurous enough to attempt the shirt loop. I say adventurous because in the Simplicity video tutorial, Norris chooses to make his shirt without the loop. Thankfully, the pattern instructions for this part are very clear.

I didn’t get any pictures from attaching the yoke because I was so focused on understanding the burrito method, but here’s what my shirt back looks like before top-stitching my yoke.

Sewing the Neckband and Collar (Steps 17-23)

Along with this being my first time making an article of clothing, this was my first time ever using interfacing.

(Funny story: I’d initially decided on a different Pellon style, researched the crap out of it, and went online to verify the in-stock selection at JoAnn’s. I went there confidently, knowing they had 100+ yards of it and someone could help me find it even if my newbie self couldn’t track it down. Lo and behold, nobody there could find it and I had to guess at a good substitute. 😵 )

Step 17 was a bit confusing from the diagram, but you want to fuse interfacing to one of the neckband (pattern piece #6) sections. Then, with the pattern sides of the interfaced-neckband and the shirt body together, start pinning the neckband to the neck curve starting at the notches.

The curved edge of the neckband should be closer to you (if you’re positioned at the bottom of the shirt).

Since I’m working with the pointed collar, I’m jumping past steps 18 and 19, which are for the club collar. Steps 21 and 22 took a solid 20 minutes for me to figure out from the video and pattern instructions combined.

The instruction say “Turn collar; press.” With the shirt pattern-side up, turn the collar piece upward so that the curved edge is now facing away from you, and its pattern-side is now up.

Once you’ve pinned that together at the notches, take your other neckband piece and place it right on top, moving the pins so that they’re holding all 3 layers together.

Finally, press the bottom (facing-you) edge of the interfacing up 3/8″. Now sew 3/8″ along the entire curved (facing away from you) edge of the neckband pieces.

(Or, as I like to call it, A Comedy of Errors)

I don’t know why I decided my first garment sewing project should be a men’s shirt. The pattern I landed on, after browsing at JoAnn’s, was the Simplicity Pattern 8427 Mimi G.

Mimi G is an awesome DIY blogger who partnered with Simplicity to create a series of patterns with online sew-alongs. I checked out the sew-along video for a minute before I bought it. Ot seemed approachable and accessible for a complete novice like myself, so I took the plunge and ran it to the register.

I must have thought — welp, if there’s a video tutorial for it, I can do anything I set my mind to!

But as usual, self-doubt got the best of me after a weekend-long, backbreaking frenzy of tracing and cutting pattern pieces out of parchment paper.

I stared at the bags of muslin and quilting cotton I’d so ambitiously purchased for this project.

And then a year went by.

I finally picked everything up again last weekend. Our roommate had moved out, so instead of being limited to a small corner of the living room I could sprawl out in our spare room/VHS library. (How retro-cool does that sound, by the way?)

Day 1

Goal: Sew the muslin for ultra-precise fitting

My boyfriend’s measurements were all over the place on the sizing chart, so I had chosen the largest measurement and decided to choose the size based on that measurement.

After asking online, I had learned that many sewists make a test garment out of muslin, adjust it to fit, and then transfer the alterations back to the pattern pieces.

Apparently, I’d already cut a few muslin pieces out and started baste-stitching them. The pocket was sewn to one of the shirt pieces.

I continued with the instructions to do the back pleat. After finishing the next few steps, I started second-guessing whether or not I sewed the piece with the back pleat to the yoke facing the wrong direction.

The next mistake made, when sewing the yokes to the back pieces, is that I stitched my shirt pieces together after lining up the edges (rather than lining up the notches). Rookie mistake.

After a couple hours, I’m second-guessing everything I’ve done and needing a quick win, a hit of dopamine, anything to get on to the actual making of the garment.

So after loosely draping the front and back pieces over my boyfriend’s body and deciding, ‘Hrm…that looks shirt-like and fitted-ish,’ I make the rash decision to skip the muslin altogether and just make the damn shirt.

It’s getting to be that time of year again. Hot cocoa and peppermint everything.

With the fall gloom settling over the Pacific Northwest, I was looking for a recipe that would allow me to replenish my dwindling supply of body lotion and provide an inkling of holiday cheer to combat the gray, rainy skies outside. This recipe definitely hit the spot.

This chocolate peppermint whipped body butter recipe makes for a fun afternoon craft, and it’s an easy first foray into world of making whipped body butters.

A friendly disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to Amazon products. When you click through to Amazon, I may receive — at zero cost to you — a small commission from the purchases you make. These purchases help support this site and allow me to continue writing helpful articles. (It also means more yummy chew toys for my canine kids.) 🐕

Unfortunately, when you search for natural cologne recipes on Google, most of the top-ranked articles in the search results feature recipes that just don’t make much sense.

Many call for diluting your oils in water, despite the fact that oil and water just don’t mix.

One prominently featured recipe calls only 10 drops of essential oils to be diluted in 8 oz of alcohol. If you follow that recipe, your scent will probably only last a few seconds. It’s just way too weak of a dilution.

My first try at making essential oil perfume was kind of a flop. I followed Wellness Mama’s DIY Herbal Perfume recipe for my first foray into the wonderful world of homemade perfumery. I carefully selected a blend of patchouli, ylang ylang, lavender, basil, sweet orange, and lime essential oils. A liquor store visit resulted in my first ever purchase of Everclear, which I lovingly added to my special oil blend.

The problem with Wellness Mama’s perfume recipe is that it doesn’t result in a perfume.

You see, perfumes and perfume-like substances are classified by the concentration of fragrance in the blend. Wellness Mama’s perfume recipe calls for 65 drops of essential oils diluted in a whopping 4 ounces of alcohol. When you do the math, that’s an essential oil concentration of just under 3%.

But perfumes are classified as having between 20-40% of a fragrance concentration.

So that’s the reason my first try at DIY perfume was a flop; I just ended up with a really weak eau de cologne (the weakest type of fragrance you can make).

Amazon Associates Disclosure

Lupe Camacho is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Patched together with and plenty of

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